


the facts of years, permutating

by brella



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, M/M, Minor Injuries, Pre-Canon, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21984241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/brella
Summary: “What are you crying for?” Sylvain asks without even looking up. “I just tripped and fell, that’s all.” He has both hands at the broken skin, pressing into the edges with his thumbs, almost pulling it open wider. Sylvain treats all wounds like this, as if he has already mastered the pain. “There, look, it isn’t even deep.”Felix doesn’t care how deep it is or isn’t—doesn’t it bleed?Over the years, Sylvain teaches Felix about pain.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 25
Kudos: 372





	the facts of years, permutating

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astrid_fischer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrid_fischer/gifts).



> happy birthday to lily, the world's best roommate. xoxo. 
> 
> [title](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjcfw5JjfNs).

I.

“Ow,” Sylvain says.

It doesn’t sound like an expression of pain—more a word registering something between surprise and curiosity—and among the bustle and noise of the stables, it’s hardly even audible. Still, Felix is nine years old, and the word _ow_ is something apocalyptic, a prelude to catastrophe—so he whirls around in the mud and straw, filled with dread, and drops his wooden sword.

“Ow,” Sylvain repeats, with that same offhanded bewilderment that could be mistranslated into happiness. He’s squatted down on one knee, hunched over so that Felix can’t see his face; his trousers are torn at the joint and there’s a wound on the freckled skin, almost garish in the brittle winter light, gushing red.

To see such an injury on Sylvain, who is eleven and invincible for reasons even beyond this wise age in Felix’s eyes, sends a bolt of panic through Felix so potent that he immediately bursts into tears. They’d been play-swordfighting only a moment ago, deeply involved in their expanding narrative about sacred stones and demon kings, and Felix had turned away for an instant to say hello to Glenn’s Mergese, Nealuchi, in his stall.

An instant, Felix thinks, and sobs harder, bending his head back to give it more room.

“What are you crying for?” Sylvain asks without even looking up. “I just tripped and fell, that’s all.” He has both hands at the broken skin, pressing into the edges with his thumbs, almost pulling it open wider. Sylvain treats all wounds like this, as if he has already mastered the pain. “There, look, it isn’t even deep.”

Felix doesn’t care how deep it is or isn’t—doesn’t it bleed?

“I’ll get Glenn—I’ll get Father!” he cries, stumbling past the horses for the door. “Stay right there—”

“You don’t need to trouble Glenn _or_ Lord Rodrigue,” Sylvain insists. “Look, see? I can stand.” And he stands.

Felix hiccups wetly on each breath as Sylvain crosses the distance between them. By the smile on his face, Felix guesses he’s trying to make it look like nothing’s wrong, but he’s hobbling a little, and even now Felix knows the places where that particular smile betrays itself, stiff and ill-maintained at the edges. When he stops a pace or two from Felix, Felix sniffles; a messy, ugly noise that seems to echo up in the ceiling.

“You’re hurt,” he says thickly.

“I’m alive,” Sylvain replies. “Blood dries up.” He reaches over with a crooked grin to ruffle Felix’s hair. “You don’t gotta be such a crybaby, you know.”

Felix squirms free, hot-faced. “I’m not a crybaby!” he snaps, and swabs furiously at his cheeks with his sleeve before running to the alfalfa bales to pick up his sword.

Glenn had made it. It’s a flat, rudimentary thing, carved out of oak. He had given it to Felix on the eve of his fifth birthday and said, _This sword can kill dragons._ And Felix had believed him.

Felix closes one small hand around the hilt, which has been worn down by sweat and pressure and the general burden of being held onto, and lifts it from the hay. Glenn had told him that he could name it one day, if he so chose—but Felix isn’t sure how names for swords are chosen, so this one has no name. In five years’ time, he will burn it.

“Aw, come on, I wasn’t making fun of you or anything,” Sylvain tells him. “Felix, are you mad? Don’t be mad.”

“Not mad,” Felix mutters, which does feel true—but he isn’t sure what he can offer in its place. Unsurely, he turns around halfway, glancing at Sylvain’s face out of the corner of his eye. “Are you—you’re sure you’re all right?” Then, quieter, “You promise?”

Sylvain sets a hand over his heart and lifts the other, an oath to keep, a mending spell cast.

“Promise,” he says.

Felix believes this, too.

* * *

II. 

At Garreg Mach, six hours are set aside each week for combat training: Monday and Friday mornings for the Golden Deer, Tuesday and Thursday evenings for the Black Eagles, and Monday and Thursday afternoons for the Blue Lions. All houses train on Wednesdays—the Eagles in the morning, the Deer in the afternoon, and the Lions in the evening. When Sylvain breaks his finger, it’s a Thursday afternoon.

“Fuck!” he howls like a cat whose tail has been stepped on, and all activity in the Training Grounds lurches to a halt.

“By Seiros, Sylvain,” Ingrid groans, dropping her training lance to her side, and Dimitri charges forward from the corner where he’d been bludgeoning the last remaining training dummy to within an inch of its life and roars, “What’s happened? What’s happened?!”

Felix had been paired up with Ashe for the day, the better to improve the latter’s swordfighting, or so the Professor had said, so he doesn’t even see what’s happened at first in all the commotion. Still, he turns around so swiftly that Ashe gives him a worried, lingering look that he suspects he’ll have to answer for later.

Sylvain already has a dense crowd gathered around him: Mercedes and Annette and Ingrid and Dimitri and the Professor; Mercedes is fussing over his hand.

“Oh dear,” she says, one set of fingers darting to her mouth. “Oh, it’s definitely broken…”

Sylvain hisses through his teeth. “What gave it away?”

Ingrid slugs him in the shoulder. “Must you be so insufferable, you great lout? She’s only trying to help.”

“Can you fix it, Mercie?” Annette asks, tugging on Mercedes’s sleeve. When her eyes fall on Sylvain’s hand, which Felix still cannot see, she goes a bit ashen.

“I’d feel much more at ease if Professor Manuela took a look,” Mercedes says as Felix finally gives up stalks over to see what the theatrics are about. “I only know suturing magic so far, after all… oh… I’m so sorry, Sylvain…”

“No need to be sorry, gorgeous. It happens to the best of us—clearly.”

Professor Byleth shakes their head with a sigh. “Off to the infirmary with him, then.” They start to shoo everyone away. “Come on, he’s not been disemboweled. Just a simple broken finger. Everyone back to your training. We’ve only got the hall for another hour.”

“Someone ought to go with him!” Annette exclaims. She looks pointedly at Ingrid, who shakes her head with wrinkled look of disgust.

“I’ll go,” Felix mutters, and everyone falls silent. “Better that than drawing lots for it.” He scowls at Sylvain, jerking his head toward the door. “Let’s go.”

Sylvain follows him obediently, cradling his hand where Felix can’t see it. Not that Felix wants to—or he doesn’t think he wants to. He doesn’t want to do much of anything except keep breathing, unknotting the sudden tension in his chest, which might choke him if it grows any tighter.

“Much obliged, Sylvain,” Professor Byleth calls after them just before the great door rumbles closed behind them.

Felix walks a pace ahead of Sylvain through the sunny courtyard toward the Knight’s Hall. It’s a warm, breezy day common to the Harpstring Moon, and the walk is dappled with shade; soon the daylight will grow wider, and the clouds will make their way north for the summer.

It’s been only a month since their entrance ceremony, when they’d all gathered at the gates among the hornbeams and craned their necks to the balcony from which Lady Rhea spoke to them of their holy duty, a word which had made Felix want to spit. His neck had been sore by the end of it, too stiff to sleep on. In the days since, he’s occupied himself with schoolwork: mock treatises, mock senates, mock combat, mock this and that—he’s grown sick of the word. He’s grown sick of many things.

“Well?” he barks over his shoulder.

“Well what?” Sylvain replies, guileless.

“How did it happen?”

“Oh, this?” Sylvain asks, as if Felix is about to turn around and give it a look. “It wasn’t a big deal. Mercedes’s just got one hell of a swing with the training swords. She somehow got me with the pommel?”

Felix stops and turns around with a sigh. “Let me see it.”

Sylvain obliges him, settling his broad and warm right hand into Felix’s palm. The pinkie is colored by a nasty, blackening bruise, and sticks out at an odd angle, almost dangling. Felix’s stomach twists and turns over.

“You’d think she’d run you through with the racket you made,” he mutters, his neck bent over Sylvain’s familiar hand, the shimmering white scar that runs down the palm from between his middle and ring fingers. Felix remembers that particular incident—Miklan had swung a sword down at Sylvain and Sylvain had halted it with an open hand. Like a fool. The amount of blood had been histrionic, so much for such a little wound. He clicks his tongue. “It’s only the pinkie. There was no need for fuss at all.”

“All right,” Sylvain murmurs, in a strange and gentle voice, as though Felix needs to be reassured of his own words.

Felix recoils, flexing his hands at his sides to push the sudden prickling heat from them. Professor Byleth has had him learning lightning magic, and sometimes it will feel as though some of the electricity lingers still in the places where muscle meets bone. It tends to feel that way more often around Sylvain.

“Ugh, we’re wasting time,” he says, turning sharply on his heel to keep walking. “Standing around won’t mend the bone. Let’s get this over with.”

“As you lead, I follow,” Sylvain answers—this, too, gentle and strange.

* * *

III.

Sylvain is perhaps fifty feet from Felix, as the crow flies—not that Felix has been watching or measuring. He’s got enough to worry about with the Black Eagles bearing down on them from the rear and the Golden Deer from the front—he’s got enough to worry about with Ashe and Annette already off the field, both struck out of the Battle of the Eagle and Lion by Hilda Valentine Goneril and her blasted Brave Axe—he’s got enough to worry about with Petra Macneary’s blade clashing against his in the cold afternoon. In spite of all of that, he still catches the swift movement of an arrow in his periphery, darting across heads and bodies.

He doesn’t catch where it lands, but he can guess by the sound. It’s not especially loud—a strained, choked-off cry, schooling itself into something unobtrusive—and it’s not a sound that he’s ever heard before, but it still cuts through the sea of his fighting classmates and lands on him like a sword to the throat. Fifty feet away.

He parries Petra Macneary, knocking her back by a step, and while she recovers he whips his head to the side in time to see Sylvain drop his hands to his sides—whatever fiery spell he’d been about to cast fades from the air—and stare at the shaft of the arrow that is now protruding from his right shoulder. He lets out a short, bewildered laugh. And then he drops to his knees in the mud.

Whatever grass and dirt and stone lie between Felix and Sylvain’s kneeling body blur into an insignificant swath of nothing when he moves. He heaves himself across it, still clinging to his sword; it’s an unobstructed path—the battle’s moved west. From there, Felix dimly thinks he can hear Bernadetta von Varley half-sobbing out a string of earnest apologies, whose echoes over the rocks seem so out of place, so childish. This is meant to be war, isn’t it, or some dressed-up mockery of it? This is meant to teach them about wounds.

“Sylvain!” he shouts, stumbling to a halt beside him even as Sylvain starts to wobble to his feet. “Don’t move, damn you—”

“Man, she got me good,” Sylvain muses with a faint, counterfeit smile. “Gonna have to give her a pat on the back later. She’s really come a long—”

Felix is breathing heavily. Very heavily. In and out and in and out and then out and out and out and out. (Glenn had had arrows in him, hadn’t he? Four or ten, in the front. Felix had never seen his body, but he had imagined it.) Everything seems in sharper focus, sharp enough to draw blood, sharp enough to snap—Sylvain most of all, at the center of it, gazing up at Felix with clouded eyes and an open mouth, comprehending something.

“Hey—hey,” Sylvain says. “Pull yourself together.” He does not mean this unkindly, Felix knows; Sylvain has seen him forget to breathe before. “One at a time. One at a time.”

“I don’t—need you to—” Felix clutches his head, wheezes. “Get—we have to get you—off the field—”

“Probably for the best,” Sylvain says, and despite the flippancy his face is ashen, sweat-beaded. “I can stand.” And he stands.

He sways on his feet, a single lurch, and Felix clumsily grabs him by both sleeves. He isn’t really sure whether he’s holding up Sylvain or himself. Maybe both.

“One at a time,” Sylvain whispers.

Felix grits his teeth and chokes down one breath, then another, all but punching them into his lungs. His hands shake in the fabric of Sylvain’s shirt, and Sylvain’s palm is grasping his elbow, the thumb running in short movements along the bone.

“Sylvain!” That’s the Professor, shouting across the field. “Are you well?! Retreat!”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Sylvain mutters under his breath, which washes hot and persistent through the space between his face and Felix’s, which is suddenly negligible. He cranes his neck, peering over Felix’s head. “Raphael’s coming this way.”

Felix’s breathing evens out clumsily, but it does even out. Clarity returns to him piecemeal. That’s right—they’ve a battle to win. That oaf Raphael Kirsten will be upon them in a moment’s time, swinging his axe or his fists or whatever else—and there will be more after him, battalions and peers, the charred smell of magic in the autumn air, another tree shaken by the bedlam and the crashing bodies into letting go of its brown leaves.

It will be winter soon, that familiar bitter season, and Sylvain is still standing.

* * *

IV. 

When Ingrid and Dedue had carried Sylvain between them to the infirmary, he had not been breathing. Felix had watched them go, rooted in place, only dimly aware of the Professor shouting orders, the stench of blood on stone, the enduring light of the afternoon sun over the rooftop of the tower, where Edelgard had at last fallen—and where Sylvain had fallen, too.

Bolganone had done it. Felix had heard the spell being cast, how the Adrestian tongue had softened it—he had seen the great flame descend on Sylvain; he had heard the scream, bone-bending. Felix’s blade is still sharp, still true. He had cut the mage to pieces.

The war is won, and Felix has just vomited in a barberry bush. Shakily, he wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist, holding back another empty heave.

A moment later Mercedes emerges from the infirmary with Annette clinging to her arm. She wobbles on her feet a little, her face drawn with exhaustion, and Annette helps to right her, whispering something that Felix doesn’t hear. When Annette’s eyes find him, they stay.

“He’s alive,” she says, and the next thing Felix knows there are tears rolling down her face, down Annette’s brave and perfect face. “He’s alive, Felix, it’s okay, he’s okay—go on. Go ahead.”

So Felix goes.

The infirmary—whatever cots and bedrolls they’d managed to salvage from the monastery’s wreckage, illuminated in the light that streams in from the crumbling stone—is crowded, noisy. The final battle against Edelgard’s forces had injured many, and killed yet more. Felix will leave the counting of it to history. He staggers through the prone bodies, the clutched hands, the sobs of pain and victory, and reaches a bed.

“Hey, you,” whispers Sylvain.

He’s propped up on two pillows, wearing no shirt; his torso and arms are wrapped in bandages. The skin on his face is soft and pink— _new_ , Felix thinks, and for a lurching second he thinks he might throw up again—and his hair looks shorter, as if it had been hastily, bluntly cut. Perhaps the ends had been burned, and Mercedes had needed to chop them off.

His voice is a skeleton of itself, hoarse and labored—but Felix still hears it. He takes one wide step forward, and then two, and kneels at Sylvain’s bedside.

“You disgust me,” he says, because it’s close enough.

Sylvain is gazing at him without blinking, his copper eyes making incremental motions across what must be Felix’s face. There is a softness to his expression—to the way it alters itself in reaction to Felix, some tide rushing in to some shore, some cloud meeting the sun—that is difficult to look at head-on. Felix settles, instead, for looking at his hand, upturned on the sheet, the fingers gently curled. His broad, familiar hand, with the crooked pinkie.

Felix does not know what power breaks him, but within an instant he’s pitched forward, not so much embracing Sylvain as he is collapsing on him. Sylvain’s arms surround him, sapped of strength, but steady.

“Sylvain,” Felix says in a hoarse, impulsive voice—wanting to say it before he wants not to. “Sylvain…”

“I’m fine,” Sylvain murmurs into his hair. His bare chest rises against the front of Felix’s shirt, until their ribs are nearly meeting, until Felix can perceive nothing but the shape of Sylvain’s body pushed to his. “I’m all right, Felix.”

His fingers tangle in Felix’s hair, sending little sparking pinpricks of feeling down his neck, and hold him in place. Unthinking, Felix turns his head inward, buries his face in the indentation where Sylvain’s jaw meets his throat, wrenches his eyes shut, feels with his lip for the pulse, the proof. He thinks that Sylvain shivers when he does this—thinks he breathes a little heavier, a little faster; thinks that his grip tightens with a desperate longing, undisguised—but he can’t be sure. He can’t be sure of much of anything, save for Sylvain’s blood beating out its living rhythm against his mouth, save for the life that continues beneath the skin—and continues, and continues, and continues.

* * *

V. 

Felix feels the cut before he sees it. When the razor comes away from his jawline, it comes away clean, but within a second more a bead of red has sprung up from the skin.

_That’s what you get_ , Ingrid would say in that lofty tone that he hates, _for sharpening your razors like you mean to slay a Demonic Beast with them_. Felix scoffs like Ingrid is there to hear it and drops the razor into the washbowl, fingering the wound to stem the blood flow.

It stings. Annoying.

“Let me guess,” Sylvain drawls from the bed. “You and your razors have once again tempted death.”

Felix turns his head to glare, but it’s difficult to keep up the integrity of the expression when Sylvain is lying there like that, like he lives here, holding whatever history book he’s reading over his head, swinging one bare knee from side to side in the morning light.

The air is already cold and brisk, and Felix had overslept. In an hour’s time House Fraldarius will be graced with the presence of some diplomats from Sreng, and he is not remotely ready nor particularly interested.

“I’ll thank you not to make any quips before we’ve eaten breakfast,” he mutters, turning churlishly back to the mirror propped up on the table. It’s a simple, sturdy little thing—round, with a silver frame—a gift from Ashe, at the war’s end.

“Come on now,” Sylvain says with an easy laugh, and when Felix looks over again he’s pushed himself up to sitting, his arm now slung across the knee. He holds the open book over the sheets. His hair is longer than it’s ever been. “Don’t tell me you’re crabby because of a little cut. How the mighty have fallen.”

“I have not fallen,” Felix snaps. “Go back to sleep. Or get dressed. One or the other. Don’t just lounge about like a courtesan. Make yourself useful.”

“Make myself useful,” Sylvain muses. “All right.”

Felix hears the rustle of sheets, and then bare feet hitting the stone floor. The air at his back shifts slightly, in that nearly imperceptible way that air does when Sylvain is close—but the perception, for Felix, has never been all that hard.

He turns on the wooden stool, craning his neck back to fix Sylvain with a questioning look. He knows each scar well enough that they may as well be his own—the puckered bloom of pink over his right ribs from a fire spell, the gauzy white stud in his left shoulder from an arrowhead—the little raised line on his right kneecap, so faded that anyone but Felix might not see it at all.

Sylvain smiles down at him and nudges his chin with two knuckles, then grazes the cut with his thumb. It comes away red.

“There,” he says softly. “It isn’t that deep.”

“I know that,” Felix says, and lifts his eyes from Sylvain’s array of scars to his face. With his hands in his lap, at ease, he says again, “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> you can come say hi to me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/brells_)!


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